Data from: Spite and the scale of competition in Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Scale of competition has been shown to be an important factor in shaping the evolution of the social interactions. Although many theoretical and experimental studies have examined its impact upon altruistic cooperation, relatively little research effort has been focused upon spiteful behaviours: actions that harm both the actor and recipient. In this study, we expand upon the existing theory by investigating the importance of global frequency of spiteful alleles, and we determine experimentally how scale of competition affects selection for spite in the bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa, under high and intermediate spatial relatedness. Consistent with our theoretical results, we find in our experiments that spiteful genotypes are more favoured under local (rather than global) competition and intermediate (rather than high) spatial relatedness; conditions that have been shown to select against indiscriminate altruism.